♥ "Are you are all comfortably seated?" the compassionate Lord checked, as the flight taxied to take-off from the Bangalore International airport. Yet another trip with God, just began.

Murwillumbah, a quaint town in the Tweed valley of New South Wales, blessed with nature's bounty was doubly blessed with the Lord manifesting for the second time in the last nine months. An hour and a half drive from the Brisbane airport, Murwillumbah or Murbah, as the locals call, is located inside the largest caldera (crater) in the Southern Hemisphere. The majestic Mount Warning is right in the centre of this crater. It is said that on a clear day one can see the coast from Byron Bay to the Gold Coast! The icing on the cake this time around? Well, spectacular views covered with copious amounts of divine energy!

The Lord's entourage touched down in Brisbane at 7pm on the evening of Tuesday, September 22, 2015, after a long eight-hour flight from Singapore, though their eyelids did enjoy the much needed rest. Gary Seaton along with the youth leaders of Australia lovingly welcomed everyone and whisked them away to Murwillumbah, considered to be the most sacred place in the country by the native aborigines. It was 10pm, but nothing stopped the zeal and devotion of all gathered at 'Shangrila', residence of Gary and his ever-smiling wife, Francis. There is always a renewed bout of energy, an unbelievable sense of passion which envelopes every person when it has anything to do with Swami. Sleep and food become a passé, which was pretty much the scene at Gary's residence, where many devotees had been working overtime to welcome God!

In the midst of soulful bhajans, Bhagawan graciously entered the living room to bless everyone at around 10:30pm! He quipped, "Is it Shivaratri today? Have you all seen the time? I was already here. They made me go out of the room & come back again. This place is full of divine vibrations. There is so much of peace here. It will grow into a good center." After Aarthi, Bhagawan retired for the night, and so did the entourage, tired, sleepy, happy, eagerly waiting for dawn to witness the unfurling of the upcoming days - God with His dear children!

Wednesday, September 23, 2015 - Morning

'Shangrila' sits in perfect harmony with its spectacular surrounds, where the landscape evokes a feeling of serenity and well-being to body, mind and spirit. The Seaton household was a flurry of activities at 6:30am in the morning. Tea, coffee and breakfast were the prime focus of the hour.

The morning commenced at 10am where Swami had invited all the organisers for a private session. After inspiring impromptu talks by Sri B N Narasimha Murthy and Sri C Sreenivas, Swami spoke to all gathered and quenched the parched souls. "Are u all happy?" was the first question, and everyone echoed in the affirmative, "Yes Swami". Swami went on to talk about happiness and said, "Happiness is union with God. It's not outside, it is inside! Only by experiencing God, will you truly know God. There is no other way of knowing Him! Until then, you can keep describing God like how the four blind men did, while describing an elephant. The one who has truly seen an elephant, will know the animal. Similarly the one who has experienced God, will know who God is. There are many ways we can understand or experience God and this requires two things - shraddha or sincere desire to attain God and the second is, patience or saburi. This is what the first avatar Shirdi Baba taught. With these two, one can attain God. The only purpose for which we are born is to understand divinity and to attain our true nature. The one with a pure heart alone is closer to God."

A short and sweet Q&A session followed, where many got a wonderful opportunity to ask some of their burning questions. Swami declared that the whole place (Murwillumbah) will become a very big Sathya Sai Ashram as the time progresses. "This is all a preparation for the next avatar. To be in the presence of divinity once again, you should engage yourself in selfless acts. I am training you, so you can pass the exam. The only condition is you have to be selfless and full of love. Prema Sai will travel all around the world, and that is how the mission of love will expand. Do you know what stops us from being selfless? Faith! The one who does not have complete faith in God can never be completely selfless!"

It was an endearing sight to see the 'prema pravaham' between the Lord and His instruments! After a hearty spread of delectable lunch, which is always the case when Swami is around, everyone retired for a very brief afternoon siesta. Of course, all the youth were busy with the preparations for the afternoon public satsang. Love without duty is divine, says Bhagawan, and this was felt in abundance!

Wednesday, September 23, 2015 - Afternoon The Murwillumbah Civic & Cultural Center was the venue for the public satsang. A short ten-minutes drive from the residence of Gary through undulating and meandering roads, skirted on either side with sugarcane plantation, topped with Mount Warning as the backdrop, was indeed a blissful journey. The Centre had been a hive of activity, in preparation for the Lord's arrival.

As Swami walked into a packed auditorium of over 500 people at 4:15pm, bhajans were in progress. A group of native aborigines took stage to welcome the Lord in the most ritualistic and meaningful way. Their dance moves were mystical, yet there was to be a deep sense of spirituality.

Talks by Sri C Srinivas and Sri Narasimha Murthy followed. Bhagawan in His divine discourse. "Maybe I have lost the physical body, but I am the atma, still there. I am the one & I have become many. Even the Vedas describe God as the one with thousand heads, hands and eyes. But from where can God get these thousand eyes, or heads or hands? There is a subtle inner significance in this statement. God is one, who is inside every being and in ever bring, the atmic principal exists. Therefore, everyone is an embodiment of God. Any divine incarnation who comes into this world have to lose their physical body. What is impermanent cannot be permanent. Then why do we continue to worship them even after they have left the physical body? Because of the sacrifices they made for mankind, one continues to worship them."

As He invited questions from the audience and answered them in the most lucid way, everyone was amazed at the simplicity of His answers. As He always says, a good teacher makes the most complicated subjects look simple!

The energy at the Civic Centre was infectious, as Swami blessed many souls. Souls wanting more of the divine interaction, as He retired for the night.

♥ The following conversation between a devotee and Swami took place in Prasanthi Nilayam many years ago and was first published in an early issue of the Sanathana Sarathi: Swami! The world is very cruel to me. Swami : That is its nature. The purpose of the world is frustration; it has to engender need. When the need is strong enough, the individual seeks fulfilment. Devotee: And fails! Swami : Only when he seeks fulfilment without! Within him, he can get it. The within is accessible always; it is ever responsible. There is pain only so long as attachment for outer forms remains. Ultimate relief from pain can come only with the loss of ego, the neutralisation of that which reacts to something as pain and something else as pleasure, whose memory, whose conditioning, helps to recognise the dualities of joy and grief. Devotee: But the world, Swami? Swami : The world is pain. Expect nothing from the world but that. I willed the totality of your conditioned existence to be pain, in order to draw you to me. Devotee: Which I can, at best, only hope to attain. Swami : God asks for neither hope nor despair. They are subject to relativity. Universal Being is beyond both hope and despair, both certainty and doubt. It knows no lingering in its conclusions. It is ever flowing, in all directions, and in none of them. Devotee: What then shall be my direction? Swami : Take what works today for today. What works tomorrow for tomorrow. One day at a time, each day for itself, each moment for itself, without a past, without memory, without conclusions. Devotee: Conclusions? Swami : Yes. Conclusions bind; they press on the mind. The newborn baby is not confined to conclusions. All conclusions enslave. Most men are slaves to the conclusions into which they have fallen. Devotee: Does that mean I have to give up my practice of concentration? Swami: The question that bothers you is one of fixity. You tried to fix your thought and attention on a word and later on a form, but you discovered that nothing lasts, that everything has to change. But I tell you; awareness can remain, even when form subsides, even when the word melts away.. Devotee: I find it difficult to hold my attention on form or word. Swami : Because when you try to meditate, the very trial invites the success-failure conflict onto the scene. You say to yourself, it is good to meditate on this and not that, or to meditate on that is wrong or foolish.. Practise choicelessness; no objective, no intention. Be yourself. Choose no particular form, for all are equally His. Choose no particular word or sound, for all are His. Devotee: I am often tossed between contradictory beliefs. Swami : Contradictions are inevitable. It is the very nature of this world and of the mind. But you can choose, either to be buffeted endlessly by the apparent contradictions or to remain in the calm centre of the cyclone. This is the problem of all problems, the problem of peripheral or central being. Devotee: The circumference or the centre, the rim or the hub of the wheel? Swami : Yes. The hub is calm, steady, unmoved. But the mind will be drawn along the spokes, the objective desires, to revolve over mud and stone, sand and thorns. It will not believe that it can get bliss from the centre, rather than from the circumference, without undergoing a rough journey over turbulent terrain. Devotee: Ultimately, it means the conquest of the mind? Swami: Learn to let all the conflicts spawned by the mind play themselves out, and cancel each other out. Be the witness to the holocaust. The ultimate solution to the conflict is not decision or even choice, but passive being. Dare to remain inconclusive. See the endless quandaries of the mind as a divine leela, God's sport, as the natural function of the bundle of desires called mind. Do not believe in mind; do not rally to its assertions and appetites. Watch the mind from a distance; do not get involved in its tumblings and turnings. Then everything becomes insignificant. When everything recedes into meaninglessness, you are in the hub, in equanimity. Devotee: Swami, you are the hub, the spokes and the rim. Swami : Do not be concerned with who I am! Concern yourself with who you are and how you can be ever aware of that truth. Do not be a willing captive of the endless stratagems of the mind. Abstain from all that draws you into its web. I will lead you, if you rely on me. The alternatives of the world will not bring you happiness, for the mind, which revels in alternatives, is but a will-of-the-wisp, flitting before your vision. I do not judge you for what is never yours, really. Your imperfection is no obstacle for me. Devotee: I confess that I have not always observed the rules of conduct of the Sathya Sai Organisation. Swami : Your mind keeps asking for rules. But when you get the rules, you find you cannot keep them. Rules engender rigidity, they force. They do not bloom out of love or spread love. There is always a way of doing a thing without the strain of a rule. See how unperturbed I am with your restlessness! I live thus, so that I may afford a lesson for you to learn. Devotee: I am restless, Swami, because I yearn for rest and do not get it. Swami : It is your reaction to restlessness that is bad, not the restlessness itself. Restlessness is only the rise and fall of a wave on the ocean that you are. Nothing matters, so long as the depths are secure. Success is not important: failure does not matter. The river of eternity is flowing ever into the ocean of the Supreme Will. Devotee: How long am I to be torn apart from that Supreme Will? Swami : You are a fraction of that Supreme Will. That is why you are afflicted with the hunger to seek It and to merge in It and to find fulfilment and bliss thereby. Turning to the world for solace and sustenance to appease that hunger has been tried by countless generations, including your own, but the hunger is gnawing still. Devotee: What then is the proper reaction to the attractions of the world? Swami : Let go. Don't cling. Be still. Establish yourself in the homelessness of the mind; physical homelessness will not earn the victory. There are many spiritual aspirants still caught in the coils of greed, envy, pride and power seeking. They have not escaped from their homes. They have built prisons around themselves. I describe homelessness of the mind as mind abiding nowhere. Devotee: And wandering everywhere? Swami : Do not exclude anything. Be the witness of everything. The exclusive cannot endure. God is all. Your restlessness came from exclusion, the pressure exerted by the excluded into the area from which it was excluded. All is God; how can you push God out of His Domain? Your mind concludes that the cause for the restlessness is whatever concerns it at the time. The actual cause is not that. You limit God by your assumptions, hence the restlessness. For you too are divine, and your reality protests against that limitation. Devotee: Swami! Sometimes I feel so sad that I am so strange, so different in habits from the rest of those that come to you for succour. Swami : If your path contrasts entirely with those around you, believe that it is my will for you. Every way is my way and ways seemingly indirect may be the most direct for some spiritual seekers. For me there are no impossible cases, no incorrigible cases. Practise choicelessness as hitherto prescribed. Choicelessness is constant contentment. Devotee: I have yet much to learn. Swami : You wish to learn from me. Well, if you are preoccupied by the body's needs, by the arrangements for its travelling, its accommodation and the food it demands, time will fly. That student learns best and fastest who does not spend his time constantly shifting from one classroom to the next. You will learn everything worth knowing in my classroom. I will expose you to all states of being, so that you may learn to rest in me in all of them. There are no insurmountable obstacles to me; there are no pre-requisites for me. I am unconditional. Devotee: But you are absent so often and away for so long at your headquarters. Swami : Always, at every time, at every place, I am where you need me. All things without are subject to the limitation of time and space, to the material laws of Nature. My outer form is no exception! If you would perceive my physical form, it must come within the range of your gaze, so position yourself so that you can see it. And even then, it may not gaze at you.. But, I am omnipresent! The limitations of the body and the outer senses do not hold for the inner vision. Therein, you can see me at any time and any place and receive darshan. The outer vision is purposely insufficient, instantaneous, transitory, casual, so that you may crave for and accomplish the inner darshan. If I have separated you from my physical image off and on, it was only to bring you to me and to establish my presence within you. That alone will replenish you and refresh you, I know. None of my absences was a rejection or rebuke. So far as you are concerned, I intended them all. And, always, I willed that you return to me.

What is Vaikunta? Bhagawan explains beautifully:Vaikuntha means, without any trace of grief or pain; the place where perfect peace reigns, and there is no flutter of fear. Ekaadhashi means the eleventh day of the lunar fortnight. The phases of the moon are numbered, and the day after the tenth, Dhashami, is referred to as the Ekaa-dhashi! But the real meaning of Ekaadhashi, the eleventh, is this: When the ten senses - the five senses of action and the five through which knowledge of the objective world is gained - are all co-ordinated and turned in the direction of God, the eleventh, then it becomes genuine Ekaadhashi! - Swami's Vaikunta Ekadasi Discourse on 7th December'1971.